Your schools

Change is underway for Columbus City Schools a year later

Columbus school attendance scandal

Columbus City Schools employees -- and perhaps others in schools throughout the state -- are accused of falsifying students' records to improve their schools' standing on state report cards. Read the complete series.

More Articles

One year ago, it was business as usual in Ohio’s biggest school district. Longtime
Superintendent Gene Harris wasn’t going anywhere. The school board was busy prepping a levy for the
fall ballot.

Columbus City Schools had just wrapped up another year in which students seemed to be making
steady but notable progress.

And then on June 15 of last year,
The Dispatch reported that the district had been altering student data, perhaps to improve
its state ratings. Like a row of dominos falling, the state stepped in to investigate. Then came
the FBI. That steady academic progress? Some of it likely is fiction. Top-level administrators have
resigned or announced retirements, including Harris. Parents have sued.

And Columbus Mayor Michael B. Coleman volunteered to help the school board run the district. His
hand-picked commission recommended a dramatic new course; the state legislature took up the cause
and is changing state law.

State and federal prosecutors are preparing to file criminal charges.

“It was smooth seas, and all of a sudden the water got rough,” Columbus Board of Education
Member Mike Wiles said of the past 12 months. “It’s a lot of changes. I don’t know if anything has
changed for the good yet.”

One year ago, the question was “Did the district cheat?” Now, the questions are “In how many
ways did it cheat, and who is responsible?”

“We know that this is not an isolated act, that it was coordinated. We know that it’s more than
simply attendance,” said state Auditor Dave Yost, whose team of investigators has been trying to
sort through the fraud over the past year.

This is known: District administrators deleted hundreds of thousands of student absences each
year for several years.
Dispatch data analysis shows that they withdrew thousands of kids who had been absent a
lot and also likely had low test scores. In the 2010-11 school year alone, workers also changed
more than 5,000 student grades from failing to passing after kids and teachers had gone home for
the year.

The most manipulation appears to have happened in high schools.

Some of the schools’ state ratings might not be accurate. Some students might have been entitled
to private-school vouchers, tutoring or other academic help, but never got it. Some might have
walked away with diplomas they didn’t earn.

Yost’s investigation began with what sounded like a computer sleight-of-hand: District
administrators were withdrawing kids, then re-enrolling them soon after, so that their test scores
wouldn’t be counted. Only the scores of kids who are continuously enrolled for most of the school
year count on state report cards.

But the scope of the investigation has spread like kudzu. Recently, Yost’s team has found “other
false reporting” in addition to grade-changing and attendance tampering. Yost said he can’t say
more; he risks interfering with other agencies that also are involved, including the FBI, federal
prosecutors, the U.S. Department of Education and the Franklin County prosecutor’s office. His own
investigation “is still in full throttle” because auditors keep discovering new things, Yost
said.

Yost had said he would issue his audit in January. Now there is no deadline.

No one has said who will be criminally charged. Many have said that former district data czar
Steve Tankovich orchestrated the systemic manipulation of student records. Tankovich did not answer
the door when
Dispatch reporters recently went to his home seeking comment.

A law firm the district has hired also has slowed the investigation’s pace, Yost said. Columbus
hired Porter, Wright, Morris & Arthur to help it navigate the ongoing data scandal; the
auditors’ subpoenas for records or requests for information go through the firm.

Investigators discovered they weren’t getting complete information from the law firm. In early
May, Yost’s team obtained search warrants and, with Columbus police, seized the records it wanted
from the district’s high schools.

As recently as June 7, Yost’s team once again used a warrant to seize records. This time, it was
teachers’ handwritten grade books.

“I don’t believe anyone expected that it would take more than a year to get to the bottom of
this issue,” school board President Carol Perkins said in a written statement issued through the
district’s public-relations office.

It scuttled the district’s plans for a November 2012 levy, Perkins noted.

“While it has been a difficult time in the district’s history, I believe that when all is said
and done, we will come out stronger as a result,” Perkins said. “There’s far greater interest and
involvement in the district among our civic and business leaders than possibly ever before —
involvement that will hopefully lead to an even stronger and more successful Columbus City Schools
in the long run.”

Over the past year, Columbus school leaders have declined to say whether they believe that
wrongdoing occurred. Harris has questioned whether the data problems were just “sloppiness,” and
the Porter Wright lawyer has blamed the state Education Department. But the district has made some
changes.

District spokesman Jeff Warner released a list of 21 rules changes made in response to the
data-changing investigation, including training, data-entry protocols and ending the practice of
principals’ meeting with Tankovich’s office to change student data.

Fewer employees can access student records now. Computer security is tighter. Principals are
required to fill out long forms and get approval if they want to change a student’s grade.

Carolyn Smith, the district’s internal auditor and one of the first to sound the alarm that
something was amiss in Columbus, said she thinks things are better. But not perfect.

“I think we have a way to go as far as the best way to avoid (fraud) — it’s prevention versus
dealing with it after the fact,” she said. “How can we prevent this and create a culture where …
employees are not so fearful and tell what they suspect as far as wrongdoing?”

Keith Finn, a retired data analyst for the district who helped expose the district’s data
manipulation, said he worries that many of the administrators who engaged in data tampering still
are working in the district.

“The saddest thing is that the school board and these lawyers continue to downplay what went on.
I think the healthiest thing is if they’d say, ‘Yes, this happened, and we’re sorry. Let’s go on.’
No one said, ‘I’m sorry.’ They still claim that it didn’t happen,” Finn said.